Feelings
Some days grief looks different.
Sometimes its feeling.
This morning it was watching Instagram reels of the Singing Widow. I didn’t know this woman. I watched reel after reel trying to figure out her story. Her grade school sweet heart husband died from a stray bullet three days after she gave birth to their first child. She remarried and experienced infertility. It was horrible and tragic and educational (she had to many tips about interacting with widows).
It made me feel.
Feel better that my life hadn’t turned out with that much sorrow. Feel worse because it brought up my own sorrow.
Just feel.
I got up, ate my breakfast and went back to bed. My boys playing in the other room, giggles erupting and calling out for me to join them. But I couldn’t do much more than lay in bed.
Then I found the Hair Budaha’s account and watched 45 minutes of a barber in South Africa react to hair videos. He is spectacular, hence the 45 minutes.Each video of his pure praise or genuine disgust hooked me in. I tried to explain to my husband the videos and it sounded much less captivating than it really was.
It made me feel.
Feel like laughing. Feel shocked. Feel amused.
While my husband was making lunch for all of us, I laid in bed and read a poetry book about grief. Poems about first boyfriends dying of AIDs and stillborn babies.
It made me feel.
I cried from the use of language capturing life lost before its time. I felt my own grief welling up from where I had willed it to hide.
Some days grief looks like feeling. When you want to lay in bed and sleep the full day away. When you want to ignore the human experience of pain and suffering. Ignore your body that has failed you month after month or in any number of ways.
Some days the work of your day is feeling.
Not accomplishing a task.
Not cleaning the house or folding the laundry.
Not numbing or distracting, but taking in all the feelings that come and welcoming them.
Seeing what they have to offer. Letting them have their place at the table of your heart and learning from them. Being fully human and fully alive to your feelings until grief has softened and allowed you to get up and accomplish the task, fold the laundry or send the email.
Sometimes the work of grief is feeling.
